"Okay, is it known why they have to be unwieldy metal disks? What happens if you try to make them on metal foil? What happens if you make them very small?"

"The 'flavour' of a magical weapon or shield is controlled by the metal or metals that compose it; the strength of its effect is controlled by its size; other details depend on its exact shape," says Inlaith. "Weapons are cylinders, and shields are disks. Various engravings alter things such as the shape of the effect."

"What if I made a suit of a few layers of cute tiny shields?"

"Try it," he says. "The metal for stun is silver. You need perfect solid circles that won't bend out of shape. It doesn't need to be perfectly pure, but some alloys lose their magical resonance."

"Can I plate 'em in diamond?"

"That would help them keep their shape, certainly."

"And it wouldn't do anything else or impurify them? I have no idea how this works, help me out."

"As long as whatever you encase them in is not also a magically resonant metal, which diamond isn't, it should have no effect."

"Okay. What does stun do when applied to regular people, exactly?"

"A direct hit to the head or body causes them to fall unconscious; anywhere else, and the affected area may become temporarily numb and unresponsive."

"Unconscious for how long?"

"Depends on the strength of the stun bolt. Anywhere from a few minutes to several days, more normally an hour or two."

"All right, can I get a few-minutes version for a baseline test before I start prototyping shields? Please do not draw on me while I am asleep."

Faidre obliges him. The bolt makes a tiny 'fwm' sound.

"A few seconds," says Inlaith.

"Okay. I might just be condensing the allotted time or a few seconds might be my maximum stunned duration, hit me with a bigger one?"

Fwm.

Faidre chuckles.

"You were out for a minute that time. How long should it have been?" says Inlaith, glancing at his grandfather.

"An hour."

"Okay, so maybe I just cut it down by a factor of sixty but I could still be severely inconvenienced by heavy-duty stun bolts flying around. Silver for the shields? Should they have little designs on them?"

"Ideally, yes. Do you need more information than 'normal stun shield engravings' to generate those designs?"

"If there's a normal I should be able to use that, I didn't know how standardized it was. Are they usually defined with math that'll scale really nicely or just sort of drawn on?"